Global Drum Project
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Cal Performances Presents Friday, September , Zellerbach Hall Global Drum Project (L–R) Giovanni Hidalgo, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju Mickey Hart Ustad Zakir Hussain Sikiru Adepoju Giovanni Hidalgo Cal Performances’ – Season is sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank. 6 CAL PERFORMANCES About the Artists Global Drum Project Mickey Hart is best known for his nearly three solo releases, beginning with Making Music in decades as an integral part of an extraordinary ex- , have won great acclaim, and his Moment pedition into the soul and spirit of music, disguised Records label is a major source of Indian music as the rock ’n’ roll band the Grateful Dead. He has worldwide. He has also created the soundtracks to also taken part in many collaborations with other many fi lms, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little musicians, including Planet Drum, Diga and the Buddha and many Merchant Ivory productions. Mickey Hart Band. He produced the “World” se- ries of ethnomusicological recordings on Rykodisc, Sikiru Adepoju was born in Eruwa, Nigeria, to a and is a member of the Board of Trustees at the musical family, and was taught drumming by his Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, father, Chief Ayanieke Adepoju—“Ayan” means where he heads the subcommittee on digitization “descended from drummers.” While still in his and preservation of the Center’s collections. He has teens, he became associated with one of the pioneer written several books, including Drumming at the creators of Afro-Beat, Chief Commander Ebenezer Edge of Magic, Planet Drum and Songcatchers: In Obey. Sikiru came to the United States in to Search of the World’s Music. and contributed mu- play with O. J. Ekemode’s Nigerian All-Stars, and sic to many fi lm and television projects, including a year later he became the chief partner to the man Apocalyse Now, Gang Related and Th e America’s who brought African drumming to the United Cup: Th e Walter Cronkite Report. States, Babatunde Olatunji. As a star member of In the s, Hart gathered together his fa- Drums of Passion and then Planet Drum, he has vorite partners in rhythm—among them Ustad become well known across the country, and helped Zakir Hussain, the maestro of the Indian tabla, to create the Spirit Drum Festival, a tribute to the Sikiru Adepoju, the Mozart of the Nigerian talk- late Ojatuni, in collaboration with Jim Donovan ing drum, and (a little later) Giovanni Hidalgo, of Rusted Root and others. He has recorded with the master of the Afro-Cuban congas, and they Carlos Santana, Airto Moreira, the String Cheese formed Planet Drum, which went on to win the Incident and Stevie Wonder. fi rst-ever Grammy Award for “World Music.” In , as these four musicians prepared to return Giovanni Hidalgo was born in Puerto Rico and again to stages across the country, it became ap- grew up in a home fi lled with the drums used by his propriate to establish a new name, Global Drum father and grandfather. His fi rst instrument was a Project, for a new time. homemade conga built by his father from a barrel. In the early s, he went to Cuba to work with Ustad (“Master”) Zakir Hussain is the preemi- Batacumbele; there he met the great Changuito, nent tabla player and classical Indian musician of and the resulting album established Hidalgo’s his generation. Th e son of the legendary Ustad Alla hand drumming technique as the baseline of Rakha, partner to Ravi Shankar and himself the Latin percussion. A few years later, he fell into a master tabla player of his own generation, he was a relationship with the iconic American jazz trum- child prodigy who began touring at the age of , peter Dizzy Gillespie—who’d been sensitive to came to the United States in , and has had Latin percussion and music since the s—and a glittering international career ever since. In ad- Giovanni became a member of the United Nations dition to being the master tabla player of Indian Jazz Orchestra. In the s, Giovanni took a four- classical music, the accompanist of choice to Ravi year from touring to teach at the Berklee College Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Shivkumar Sharma, of Music, in the process further incorporating he has pursued collaborations with western mu- many Latin rhythms with reggae, African and jazz sicians like John McLaughlin (Shakti), Charles beats into his music. Like his three partners in the Lloyd, Yo-Yo Ma and Mickey Hart that have fur- Global Drum Project, he has no peer in his par- ther carried Indian music around the world. His ticular genre. CAL PERFORMANCES 7.